Unsung Heros: Non-Running Spouses/Significant Others

On this, the day of our 5th wedding anniversary, I wanted to take a moment to recognize Husband.

As is obvious by the increasingly narrow focus of my journal entries lately, training for a marathon can consume your life pretty quickly. By default, this means it also impacts the lives of your family whether they like it or not. I knew it would be hard, so before I even made the decision to train for a marathon (last May), I consulted Husband to get his feelings on the matter. Thankfully, he was supportive and always has been.

Now deep into marathon training, I'm finding that these days I get on my own nerves when just about every decision must first be vetted against my training schedule. I can't even imagine how irritating I am my to my non-running husband.

In fact, sometimes I wonder if he would have gone through with it had he known that his artsy fartsy fiance was going to change into an obsessive runner woman.

I'd like to think he still would've married me.

Luckily for me, it turns out that Husband is gifted with a saintly amount of patience when it comes to me and my neurosis. So thank you, dear Husband, for putting up with:

• My hours of absence spent training.
• My decidedly old-lady sleeping schedule of 9 pm beditme and 5 am wake up.
• Constant paranoia regarding the state of my feet.
• The lack of cheese, beer, and wine in the house (all decidedly not ideal pre-run consumables).
• All the money I've spent on races, shoes, and Lululemon.
• Weekends shot to hell because of MTT.
• Me on crutches.
• The fact that I more often than not smell like chlorine or sweat.
• Long, boring recounts of my training sessions.
• All of my stories about my running friends, their injuries, their races, their training, etc.

And for being my personal valet at races. 

And for holding all of my crap at races.

And for reminding me that there is much more to life than running.